Friend dilemma related to a professional/academic project

So, I have this friend that has been with me since the beginning of the graduation. There is nothing sexual or emotional between us, she is married too. The thing is, we both want to pursue the academic career and there is a high chance we will be together in grad school next year.

We are used at doing academic works together too. And we even got the same internship (mostly, I got it too because of her recommendation and effort to put me in too). So, at some point, we were professional colleagues too.

Our areas are very similar, and we've been discussing the possibility of writing an academic book, or series, together. We've had several brainstorm sessions but I still feel a need a solo publication and I feel I can indeed handle one by myself.

I started doing it a few days ago, I have the skeleton of the project, and I'm already finishing a small sub-chapter.

I believe that she will be very disappointed that I didn't invite her to participate. I'm still not certain about this, but I don't believe inviting her to participate will help the project. It will actually make it harder, on my view.

This project I'm writing is not a product of ideas we developed together. It may be, in small part, but mostly its an idea I came up myself. I can either "fast-track" and draft most of it myself during these vacations, or I could invite her and extend the idea by some more painful months.

I don't feel she will be able to help because she has a 5-day-8h job, a family, and she is also going through financial issues, which I will take some very significant part in helping so she can enroll in the graduate school program next year, yes, that is how close our friendship is. I'm doing it because she did the same for me 2 years ago.

Even if her wish to help is good and she has good intentions, I'm fairly sure it will be a burden to the project. She will not be able to read the materials and write extremely specific and high-quality scientific material for the small book. I will end up having to clean it all up, and it will add months to project, potentially making it become "stuck" once we begin classes. And even if we succeed, we will share 50% of gains (academic and potentially financial), but I would have done 80% of the work. I don't want this.

Now, how to deal with this?

We have been discussing projects together for some time. But I feel more of an "obligation" to consider her, in the political sense, and no pragmatic or practical reasons to consider. Don't get me wrong, I do believe she has talent, and I also trust her. but on this specific context and situation, I feel I should pursue this one myself.

But I still have no idea on how to deal positively with her, if I indeed choose to continue this by myself. Please help? I don't want to ruin the friendship, or have her foster a lasting resentment because of this. Specially because we will probably be together for the next two years.

 

Yes, I do believe she is currently under the impression of working on something together with me. We have made explicit mentions to joint works, but nothing precisely related to this specific subject I'm currently drafting. I will look forward clarifying that I am drafting something and see how she reacts, as soon as I have the chance.

Science, and academic content creation are very often very fluid and erratic in terms of creation. We had several ideas on formats and procedures for publishing results and our work, but I came up with this specific set of ideas and I simply started doing it, and it's original, made by myself and I really want to do it alone because it's a challenge and because I feel the success of this depends on it. I'm confiden
t the chances that she will understand me are high, if I explain it with care. I hope those chances are high enough though.